'GUY LIVINGSTONE,' 'SWORD AND GOWN,' AND 'BARREN HONOR.'
This terrible power of fictitious invention, wherewith God has endowed man, and which now-a-days we take readily enough, without comment, is yet the growth of comparatively modern times, the development within a few centuries of a new faculty. The Greek never solaced his leisure with the latest tale of a gifted Charicles or Aristarchus, and the grave Roman would have been as much startled by a 'new novel' as by the apparition of a steam engine. The famous Minerva press was the first mighty wellspring whence gushed the broad and rapid torrent of cheap fiction. This perennial fountain has long ceased to flow, yet has its disappearance left no unsatisfied void. The procreation of human kind has failed to support the elaborate theory of Malthus, but had the sage philosopher transferred his calculations from the sons of men to works of fiction, then indeed he might stand forth the prophet of a striking truth. The extensive plain over which this flood is spread seems even to be extending its limits, and a spongy soil of unlimited capacity is ready ever to absorb the fresh advance of waves. It is indeed striking to observe how authors and men of talent have increased, so vastly out of all proportion with other classes of men. Observing it, the political economist may well shout 'Io triumphe!' for that even in so delicate and intangible a matter as intellectual gifts, the famous doctrine of supply and demand is so thoroughly carried out. We raise, however, no hue and cry after 'poor trash.' Neither have we the blood-thirsty wish to run to ground the panting scribbler, or to adorn ourselves with the glories of his 'brush.' Let those who countenance him by reading his works, and who can reconcile the purchase thereof with their consciences, answer to their fellow men for the inevitable consequences. But it must be confessed that there is in this department a sad want. All readers of moderate discrimination must have felt it painfully. In the literature of fiction we need organization. How do we know a good tea from a bad? Is it by the universal consent of the good people of China—by a democratic 'censeatur' of the celestial nation? Not at all. Every variety is tasted by men who rinse their mouths after each swallow, and the comparative merits are gauged and graduated by adepts, who make it the sole business and profession of their lives. A similar process we need in fiction. The old system of criticism in reviews and magazines worked well in its day, but it won't do now. The era of the old-fashioned novel critic has gone by. He knows it, and his voice is seldom heard. Even a numerous body, working promiscuously and without conjunction, could not accomplish much. The only manner in which the requisite result could be brought about would be by a regularly organized set of men, working under direction and regulated by authority, like the body of tax assessors or national judiciaries. Such a corps should be trained to their work as to a profession like that of law or medicine, having brotherhoods in every publishing town or city, working together and subordinately, like the order of the Jesuits. They should test every work before it was given to the public, and brand it with precisely its mark of real merit. And thus might be accomplished a most inestimable public service. In France such a system might be practicable, and not hostile to the spirit and institutions of a nation accustomed to have everything, even to the play programmes of the theatre, regulated by the powers that be. But in America, home of democracy and fatherland of individual independence, such a scheme, so invaluable though so impossible, must, we fear, ever remain a tantalizing vision. As it is, of course many a man of real ability is drowned in the rushing waves of multitudinous authors, and his works pass undistinguished to that unknown grave which gapes so mysteriously in some hidden recess of the universe, and silently swallows yearly the vast masses of printed paper which has done its brief work and been thrown by read or unread, forgotten. It is to assist in the rescue of a struggling author from this yawning abyss that the present article is sent forth, a plank in the shipwreck.
Who may be the object of our present criticism, we must confess we know not. Whether it be a brother man, or whether our words of praise may win us the kind regards of a 'gentle ladye,' we can only conjecture. Our process must be in rem, not in personam. 'It'—for thus perforce we must speak of our Unknown—weareth an iron mask of inscrutable mystery, as complete as that of the all-baffling Junius. The field, however, of speculation is open to our wandering reflection. Herein we guide ourselves by natural signs, the configurations of the stars and the marks of the soil. We judge from the mould in which the favorite male characters are cast, and from the traits invariably bestowed upon the heroines, also by the general choice of scenery, by the groupings, the 'properties.' Upon such authority of intrinsic evidence we have no hesitation in pronouncing the writer to be a man. Certain novel-writing ladies indeed are given to depicting most royal heroes, types of the ideal man, glorified beings endowed with every charm of physique and of spirit. Such find an irresistible fascination in allowing their fancy to run wild riot and poetic revel in contemplation of a wonderful male creature, so graceful, so beautiful, so strong, so brave, so masterly, so bad or so good as the case may be—a spirit of chivalry incarnate in the perfection of the flesh. They cannot build a shrine too lofty, nor burn too generous store of incense before this exalted one. The man, as he reads, smiles. Such a brother has never been born to him of woman—never since the days of Adam in paradise, neither ever shall be. The fair votaress standeth without the vail of the temple, nor have its mystic recesses ever disclosed to her scrutinizing vision actual 'Man.' Let us not however harshly dispel such illusions, neither drench with the cold flood of unnecessary ingenuousness the glowing embers of myrrh and frankincense. Occasionally, perchance, some sinful human, conscious within himself of no demerits beyond his fellows, may repine at passing comparison with this shadowy conception. But as a general rule, it is wise enough to tolerate such pleasant vagaries of worshipping woman. Of this fair description are the proud statues which look out upon us in Apollo-like majesty from the galleries in 'Guy Livingstone,' 'Sword and Gown,' 'Barren Honors.' Guy, Royston Keene, and Alan Wyverne, are such fanciful delineations, such marvels of bodily glory and chivalrous spirit. They might be drawn by a woman. The accompaniments are in admirable keeping; and the whole scenery is gotten up to match, and most unexceptionally. Our characters are dissipated upon a scale suited to the heroic age and the primeval constitution of the race. They gamble quite en prince, and carouse most royally. They have a capacity for terrible potations, should mischance or crossed affections so incline them; yet they can seldom plead the latter excuse, for we are given to understand that woman-kind are born to be their helpless slaves and victims. They are perpetually doing deeds of terrible 'derring-do;' upon the backs of unmanageable steeds they leap limitless chasms and the tallest of walls; they gallop to death in battle and dispel ennui in midnight conflicts with desperate poachers. Such scenes are quite within the scope of some feminine imaginations, but scarcely such a power of description as that wherewith we have them here set forth. Women thrill sometimes at fierce tales of stalwart knock-down struggles, many of them will back fearlessly the most mettlesome of thoroughbreds; but when it comes to talk thereof, they strive in vain for adequate power of language. The best words and the strongest sentences will not come. These demand the clarion roundness and ring essentially masculine—very virile indeed. The muscular gripe of a man—not the white, tapering fingers of any maiden—held the pen which wrote so gloriously of Livingstone's terrible riding, of Royston Keene's bloody sabre charges. We know it by unerring instinct, as we could tell a morsel of the smooth cheek of the damsel from the grizzled jowl of man.
But as usual, the crowning glory of most anxious labor is to be sought in the female characters. These are nearly all of the majestic, haughty, and queen-like caste—tall, imperious beauties, empresses of society, to whom men are slaves, and life a triumphal march of unbroken conquests. So it is at least until they meet some one terrible subduer of woman—a Guy or a Keene—in whom they recognize masterhood, and the right and power to reign. With the last stateliness of royalty these magnificent presences glide through the proud pomp and pageantry of their surroundings, graceful as swans, faultless in classic form, and face as white as Grecian marbles, domineering as sisters of Cæsars, violet eyed, statuesque, cold upon the chiselled surface, but aglow with the white heat of feeling and forceful passion beneath. How blue are their clear veins interlacing beneath a crystalline skin!—for their blood is a more sublimed fluid than that which waters the clay of ordinary humanity. They have with them an unutterable glory of conscious power, the magnificence of a perfect, God-given nature, such a haughty spirit of rivalless dominion as might have swelled the soul of a Jewish queen, monarch of Israel, ruler of God's chosen people in the day of their unbroken pride, when she felt that none greater than herself dwelt upon the globe. But with inevitable tread approaches the universal moral which points the tale. The measured step of the godlike hero echoeth along the corridors. The royal maiden, hearing the ominous tramp, is cognizant of an unwonted thrill and a sensation unfelt before. Her prophetic instinct telleth her too truly that her wild independence is concluded, that the day of bondage and of fetters has dawned, that the inexorable One, who alone in all the millions of created men is able, is even now present with, the gyves of her slavery in his hand. But the denouement is never at the bridal altar. Our host entertaineth us with no loves of Strephon and Phillis, nor leads beneath shady arcades to a vine-clad cottage, wherein is love and rich cream and homemade butter. The three sisters, the dread Moiræ, in their darksome cavern, spinning the golden thread of destiny, reel from their distaff no bright soft film of wedded happiness. The polished metal, many times refined, would never show half its qualities were it not subject to unwonted tests. We suffer according to our powers of endurance, and are tried according to our gifts. Else why are the powers and the gifts given to us by a Providence which never wasteth, nor doeth in freakish negligence. The yoke of love is not weighty enough to bow sufficiently the curving neck. With a love which cannot be satisfied comes the mighty temptation to sin and disgrace. Even into this black chasm our beauties look with steady eye, and meditate the step. It is a part of their self-sustaining nature and towering spirit to wreak their own will. Once let them give their love to man, and it is the passion of their lives. Of gossip and the wagging tongue of scandal, and of that vague, shadowy phantom, reputation, they reck not. These unsubstantial fleeting barriers are dissipated in an instant before the mighty breath of their omnipotent passion. Their love is the great fact of their lives. Why should it yield to less powerful sentiments, to inferior satisfactions. If the laws and sentiments of the commonalty of mankind oppose, why gain the lesser, palling pleasure of a fair character among our fellows whom we care not for, and lose the one joy of existence? Such, in all three of these novels, to a greater or less extent, is the theory of action of the female characters.
They are however rescued from the last degree of actual crime in each case by the good taste of the author, feeling that such chapters had better not be written voluntarily in fiction, or perchance by his love for his proud maidens, whom he cannot taint with degradation in act, even if the sin upon their souls be wellnigh as black in the eyes of a strict judge, arbiter alike of the seen and the unseen. Such are hardly the conceptions wherewith the brain of a cultivated woman would teem. It were too glaring treason to her sex and to her own nature. Although it must be said that there is no word of coarseness or bold suggestion of wickedness to be found upon any page. So far from it, we scarcely find recognized the crime to which the maidens are tempted, and we half-ignorantly wonder at the existence of compunctions, excited at we can scarcely say what. But the author knew probably well enough, and if she were one of the sisterhood of women, then must she be isolated and at enmity with them all. Her hand is against every woman's and every woman's hand against her.
Perhaps there is a fault in the tone of these novels. This may have been inferred by some strict moralists from the preceding paragraph. But they have indeed not the slightest trace of impropriety about them. They are not tainted in the slightest with the insidious viciousness of French novels. Their fault arises from rather an opposite tendency of mind and a different train of feelings. They are of the world, worldly. They are cold and sarcastic; they inculcate self-sufficiency, and preach to man to be a tower of strength in himself, not always in the praiseworthy Christian way. There is no single word of scoffing or disrespect for religion, no slur upon it whatsoever. Only we are aware, as by an instinct, that in the circle of our characters it is wholly ignored. In their world it is not an agent, whether for themselves or others. It is as unrecognized a system as is Mohammedanism or Buddhism with ourselves. The heroes have all 'seen the world' in the most thorough and terrible sense of those words. For them virtue and vice are much alike. Their wills are iron. They fix their eye upon their goal, and straight thereto they firmly march over the obstacles of precipices, through the blackness of quagmires, crashing athwart laws, customs, and conventionalities, as elephants calmly striding through underbrush. They disregard the prejudices of the world equally for evil and for good. And a moral independence which might furnish forth the most glorious of martyrs in invincible panoply is quite as likely to assist a hardy sinner. The sneer and sarcasm and contempt are for the conventionalities of the world, for the belief of the mass of mankind in right and wrong, and for the customs and habits which the republic of humanity has established for better assistance in the paths of virtue—as if, forsooth, such were vulgar because common, and to be despised by the mighty because useful to the feeble. This is not the proper spirit for the satirist. If he wields his pen in support of such a theory he will do more harm than good. A conventionality is not necessarily bad or contemptible merely as such. Not a promiscuous and indiscriminate slashing, but a careful pruning is the proper method in the garden of society. The indiscreet hand will cut what it should leave, and leave perhaps what might have been better sacrificed. The artificial trellises whereon we train our feeble virtues, which may hardly stand by their own strength, must not be shattered in a general slaughter of weeds which have taken root and nourishment in the rank soil of fashionable etiquette. Let us not dash the image from the altar, nor quench the fire at the shrine, before we have another idol and another shrine to give to the old worshippers, who must worship still. Such reckless iconoclasm is too dangerous. It is in this point of discretion that our author is most reprehensible. The moral tone of his works might have been improved had his independent tendencies been rather more judiciously indulged. There is, however, one character of loveliness and purity almost sufficient to leaven the whole mass and to dash our entire reprehension. In all the scope of our novel reading, nowhere do we remember to have met a more exquisitely charming character than that of fair Constance Brandon. Every charm of spirit and of person is lavished upon her. At the same time she is conceived with faultless taste. No feeble extravagance offends our feelings; no tinsel or affectation thwarts our admiration. The execution is worthy of the thought, which is simply beautiful. The portrait is like Raphael's divinest Madonna, with the changing radiance and velvety warmth of life thrown into the matchless face. Why could we not have had more such, instead of such indifferent domesticities as La Mignonne?
When we say that none of these three novels are destined to pass into the eternal literature of the language, we pass no very harsh or damning judgment. Men of the highest powers must bow to the same decree. Our author, though his thews and sinews are stalwart, is yet hardly cast in the mould to indicate such excessive vitality. He can hardly trouble the stride of those lordly veterans of the turf, Scott or Thackeray; yet without exertion spurning the rearward turf, he clicks his galloping hoofs in the faces of the throng of the ordinary purveyors of fiction. His fancy is exuberant; his imagination brilliant, florid, verging at times almost upon the apoplectic. But the cognate mental member, invention, is most sadly destitute of free and sweeping action. His plots are of the simplest, and betray indubitably a numbness or imperfect development of the inventive faculties of the brain. People who read novels for the denouement, who ride a steeple chase through them, leaping a five-page fence here, a ditch of a chapter there, and anon clearing at a mighty bound a rasper of some score or more paragraphs, resolute simply to be in at the death in the last chapter, anxious to see the wedding torches extinguished, and the printer setting up 'Finis'—such would find little satisfaction in 'Barren Honor,' almost none in 'Sword and Gown.' Reading these works is like passing through a wondrously beautiful country. But it is not the indolent beauty of southern climes, to lounge through sleepily in a slow-rolling travelling carriage. You must ride through it on the proud back of a blooded steed. Canter, run, if you like, when the ground is fit and the spirit moves, as often enough it may; but do not fix your eyes upon any distant gaol, and time your arrival thereat. Enjoy what is close at hand. Admire now the blue glories of the proud hills, recumbent in careless grace of majesty in the indolent sunlit atmosphere; gaze then into the sombre depths of solemn retreating forest; tremble anon in the black shadow of the fierce rock beetling over your bridle way; and fill your rejoicing being with the fresh-distilled vigor of the springy step of your charger on the turf. It will put bounding manliness into your sluggish civilian blood. Read each page, each chapter for itself; or regard it as one handsome marble square in the tesselated pavement of a haughty palace, not as a useful brick in the domestic sidewalk, which is to carry you straight to a homely destination. Observe the description of scenes, how powerful! the delineation of character, how fascinating! and be pleased with the luxuriance of the style and the gorgeous drapery of language wherewith so royally the thoughts are robed.
Our author is not true to nature—he is extravagant, high-wrought. Nobody ever met his heroes or his heroines in real life, nor lived the scenes told of in his poetry. His men and women are the men and women of an enthusiastic fancy; his scenes and incidents are the scenes and incidents of our romantic dreams. We know none so lovely as ethereal Constance Brandon; we never gazed into the violet-flashing eyes of a Cecil Tresilyan; none of our friends are quite prototypes of the omnipotent 'Cool Captain;' they betray neither the athletic chivalry of Livingstone nor the winning beauty and high-souled nobility of generous Alan Wyverne. We never saw such models, for such never quitted their ideal essences to become incarnate in the flesh. But why need this be an insuperable objection? We don't find Achilles any the less interesting because we doubt the ability of any degenerate modern to calmly destroy such outnumbering hosts of his fellow beings, and send such a throng of warrior souls to hades without scath or scar to his invulnerable self. Ivanhoe got out of some very awkward scrapes by the exertion of a prowess quite exceptional in such a 'light-weight.' The extravagance is not glaring enough to discompose us. Surely a tolerable proximate approach to possible existence ought to satisfy a not viciously captious critic. We are reading of shadowy beings: why should not the facile mists be permeated with a somewhat subtler light, and melt into somewhat airier forms of perfection than we have been accustomed to catch imprisoned in the substantial dulness of the flesh? If we will only choose, we may revel in the company of somewhat glorified mortals. It may be a luxury to us, if we will not be jealously illiberal and envious. It is pleasant to emerge from our little chintz-furnished parlor, and lounge in castles of dimly magnificent extent, where we are sure to meet the choicest society; where some order their mighty hunters from the capacious stables, and others go out to drop a stag, or run a fox, or bag a few pheasants in the preserves, just to get an appetite for dinner, from which stupendous meal, tended by hosts of velvet-footed menials and florid old-family butlers, resplendent ladies rise to retire to gorgeous drawing rooms of any draperied dimensions we may choose to fancy, leaving perhaps a score of gentlemen guests to quaff cobwebbed wines in unstinted goblets. Why isn't it pleasant to linger sometimes in these royal abodes, and to saunter in the endless lawns and forest glades of the rich and the great, where we may encounter ladies rather handsomer and gentlemen rather haughtier than they are generally made in our own circle? Let us not be captious, but agreeably appreciative.
In a short sentence in one of the opening chapters of 'Sword and Gown,' our author proclaims probably the intention, certainly the result of his literary labors—to produce a string of beautiful cameos, with just thread enough of story to string them upon. This task is done, and well done. The classical allusions are numerous, and seldom can we blame one as out of place. Generally they are wrought into beautiful little pictures, complete in themselves. He manages them with wonderful dexterity, never making too much of them, nor dwelling upon them too long; but with his masterly skill in language he handles his words as a painter his colors, and now we have a bold royal sketch, cloudy outlines of gigantic proportions, shadowy scenes of indefinite grandeur, done with a few strong, words and magnificent adjectives; and now a little paragraph, charming in its exquisite daintiness, like a miniature rarely done upon the face of a costly gem. It is in this word-painting that he is surpassingly admirable. Delineation, description, portraiture are his forte. The same quality of mind which gives dreams of princely men and divine women seems to have brought also a generous endowment of warm, rich words, wherewith to do justice to the imaginings. All the beauty, dignity, and glory of English logography seem to be his: he marshals an array of adjectives and phrases which seem all of the blood royal of our munificent mother tongue. Oftentimes his page sounds like the deep-rolling anthem of a mighty cathedral organ. Might and music are in his syllables; and without sifting his sentences for a noble thought or a beautiful idea, we may be pleased by the stately tread of their succession, and their rich harmonious cadences.
The scenes are apt to be rather melodramatic. Wonderful passions work wonderfully. Eyes flash, lips are set, cheeks grow pale, quite often. Great coolness, vast powers, are continually displayed; yet they are well displayed, after the fashion of gentlemen, not of bravoes or villains or highwaymen. He handles thunder and lightning, the terrific weapons of the mighty Jove himself, in a very haughty, Jove-like manner, it must be confessed. He isn't afraid of singing his fingers with the thunderbolts, but seizes them with the familiar gripe of unquestionable authority. In a glorified language he paints glorified visions. Very little of the calm domestic sunlight of the working noonday glimmers among his pages, but a perpetual, everlasting gorgeousness of deep-colored sunset radiance. For merit of style all these novels are well worthy of commendation and of study. Education and extensive reading have preserved them from faults of gaudiness and meretricious ornament. They are chastened by good taste and regulated by gentlemanly cultivation. They are written by a scholar, and not by a scribbler; and while reading their magnificent pages we need have no misgiving that we are admiring the flashy ornaments of wordy or half-educated mediocrity. Far the best of them is also the first, 'Guy Livingstone.' The poorest is 'Sword and Gown;' this has the feeblest plot, in fact a mere apology for a story, and contains more passages which seem unfinished, and what on a second reading would scarce have satisfied their own writer. 'Guy Livingstone,' though not faultless, is a work of power, talent, and brilliancy. Guy himself is an Olympian character, sketched upon the scale and model of a Torso, a giant in his virtues and his vices and his frame—but exaggerated with such tact and ability that even the impossible hugeness charms and fascinates. The feats of the hero in the dance and carpeted salon, on his mighty hunter leading the breakneck chase, carry us away with all the heat and ardor of sympathy; nor do we stumble in our companionable excitement over any unwelcome snag of commonplace thought or vulgar daring. Constance Brandon, as we have above intimated, we consider a splendid masterpiece—a woman lovely as the imagination of man fondly likes to dream, with every winning grace of manner and amiable charm of purity. She is the finest character and the fairest face beyond all compare in the gallery; and the scenes in which she figures are the most able, the most moving, and the most unexceptionable in every point of view, of all that our author has given us.